"Wax On----"

If there was a place that, no longer exists, but that you could travel back in time to (some place that you personally had been to), what place would it be?

To me it'd be The Magazine Exchange, a bookstore that existed in the pre 1975 days on the corner of 642 East Chestnut Street in Louisville, Kentucky.

This store was run for many years by Mr. & Mrs. Gene Barker. They sold old magazines, paperbacks, comics, hardcovers, and even pulp magazines from the 1930-50's. As a young teen collecting comics, it was a treasure-trove for me.

When I first visited the shop circa 1964 or 'early '65, comics were still sold for six cents there. The first time I visited, I bought around $12.00 worth. Well, okay, go my dad bought them for me, which was extremely generous of him considering that twelve bucks was a considerable amount of money back then. But I had 200 comics, all from the 1950-60's, and from all sorts of publishers.

In later visits I recall buying many old pulps magazines, The Spider, and SF types, and Boy's Life Magazines with "Trigian Empire" strips, an many paperbacks, a Mexican edition reprint of an E.C., and, of course, just tons and tons of comic books.

He finally raised his price to a dime a book around 1969, and it stayed that way for a couple of years until a certain someone (whose name you would instantly recognize) "clued him in" to what comics were bringing with the then emmerging collectors' market. I visited the Barker's shop up until 1970 or so before my interest back then went towards "other" interests, and the whole block where once stood The Magazine Exchange was been torn down to make room for various hospital a good thirt years ago now, but those 5 or so years of driving almost 90 miles just to get to that shop and buy books will always be a great collecting memory.